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In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, six women have come forward to tell their own stories of inappropriate conduct, this time at the hands of filmmaker Brett Ratner. The graphic report in the Los Angeles Times features accounts of six actresses, including Olivia Munn, Natasha Henstridge, and Jamie Ray Newman, who accuse Ratner of masturbating in front of them, forcing them to perform oral sex, making unwanted and repeated inappropriate comments, and more.
According to the women, Ratner leveraged his star power and money-making abilities with women. On the set of Rush Hour 2, Eri Sasaki, an extra in the film, remembers that “Ratner approached her, ran his index finger down her bare stomach and asked if she wanted to go into a bathroom with him.” Sasaki declined, to which Ratner responded, “Don’t you want to be famous?”
Olivia Munn had an even more unpleasant experience with the director/producer. The actress recalls that while visiting a friend on the set of After the Sunset in 2004, she was asked to drop off food in Ratner’s trailer as a quick favor. When she entered the trailer, “he walked out … with his belly sticking out, no pants on, shrimp cocktail in one hand and he was furiously masturbating in the other,” she told the LA Times. “And before I literally could even figure out where to escape or where to look, he ejaculated.”
Munn’s experience with Ratner didn’t end there. After telling her attorney about the incident, Munn was dissuaded from pressing charges against someone who could derail her fledgling career. Instead, she attempted to avoid Ratner, but she was unable to distance herself from him. On a 2011 appearance of “Attack of the Show,” Ratner told viewers that he has dated the actress. “I used to date Olivia Munn, I will be honest with everybody here. When she was ‘Lisa.’ That was the problem. She wasn’t Asian back then,” he said. Munn denies that they had any sort of relationship, citing his claims as “a complete lie.”
Ratner’s official statement on the accusations comes from his lawyer, Martin Singer, who “categorically” disputes each account. “I have represented Mr. Ratner for two decades, and no woman has ever made a claim against him for sexual misconduct or sexual harassment,” Singer said in a statement to the LA Times. “Furthermore, no woman has ever requested or received any financial settlement from my client.”
